Dueling Selves
In the temple of my Official Self
I reign, clear and free.
My words are sacrosanct.
No enigma exists.
I am precise, logical, certain.
I am Officially Queen.
My Unofficial Self, however,
takes comfort in the fact
that, now and then,
I am careless with my guards.
I let them off too early.
And in the tinkling uncertainty of
my outer circumference,
that fragile terrace that is supposed
to keep out the
bogey man as well as
lesser mysteries,
there my Unofficial Self,
that Greater Aspect I shy away from,
dances across marble,
bending columns as she goes,
shifting cornices and lintels
in her efforts to remove
the barriers that keep her
from the Official Keeper
of the Queendom:
She who accounts for each dollar
and each moment spent
not fulfilling duty,
She who thinks this temple
can actually remain sacred
without fire to purge
or pain to buckle doorways.
This Official Self,
who thinks she is bigger than life,
and thus can keep life away.
She is wrong.
The terrace expands inward every day
giving way to more dance floor.
The Unofficial One, that
enigmatic Self
She flies in, around, through,
dropping flames to burn the temple down.
She knows what she is doing.
She knows a phoenix cannot rise
if there is no bed of ashes.